


Mix Tape

by monaboyd_archivist



Category: The Lord of the Rings RPF
Genre: M/M, Romance
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2004-04-01
Updated: 2016-07-30
Packaged: 2018-07-28 11:15:16
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 11
Words: 7,967
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/7637881
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/monaboyd_archivist/pseuds/monaboyd_archivist
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Because music always got them going...</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Track One

**Author's Note:**

> Note from Shirasade: this story was originally archived at the Monaboyd.net Archive, which was closed in September 2014 due to software issues and a lack of new submissions for several years. To preserve the archive, I began manually importing its works to the AO3 as an Open Doors-approved project in October 2014. I e-mailed all authors about the move and posted announcements, but may not have reached everyone. If you are (or know) this author, please contact me using the e-mail address on the Monaboyd.net Archive collection profile.

/I haven’t been this scared  
In a long time  
And I’m so unprepared  
So here’s your Valentine/  
-Blink 182, “Going Away to College”

“Here,” you say. Elijah looks up at you, smiling tiredly. A cigarette burns against the brick red picnic table, a long column of ash sagging dangerously close to dropping. You offer the paper plate, which is going weak from the dampness of waiting. “Food. For you. All your favorites, right?”

His eyes roam the pickings, slide over mounds of rice and the yellow surfboards of fried plantains pooling in their own grease. Big blank blue eyes rimmed in red.

“Yeah,” he smiles. He takes the plate and puts it on the table. One of the hills of rice wavers and collapses, sending white grains stampeding across the tabletop. “Thanks.”

“Sure,” you grin, and move to go. He reaches out and plucks at your sleeve.

“Wait. Sit down.”

Your ass is on the bench before his words are even finished. Then you scoot up close to him because-- well because of a lot of reasons, but also because it’s cold out, and dark outside the mess tent, and because he is early-morning warm and good to be near. He picks up a plastic fork and pierces a plantain. He pokes it between his lips and sucks it down, and you listen to him chew, watch his eyelids flutter once, happy. The dull sparkle of grease on his lower lip.

“Good?” you ask. He nods and swallows.

“Mm. Tastes great. Warm.” He folds through the rice, unleashing long coils of steam. “But it’s a weird kind of a breakfast, Dom.”


	2. Track Two

/You don’t have to go home  
But you can’t stay here  
I know who I want to take me home/  
-Semisonic, “Closing Time”

Lager sloshes over your wrist, burns you cold, wakes you. Billy tilts his head at you quizzically. You were watching Elijah sandwich himself between bodies on the crowded dance floor, his molecules making love to all the molecules around him. He lets go into the frenetic energy of clubbing with all the boundlessness of a high school kid, throwing himself in and coming out without his edges. You bite the rim of your glass sharply and taste hardness.

Billy touches your elbow and points. You follow his finger to where Elijah is looking at you over his shoulder, his eyes bigger and sharper in the strobe light glare. His “rape me” eyes, you’ve called them. How well they go with him and the milky skin in the hollow above the collar of his T-shirt. How well he sweat-streaks his hair with his hand, and how well he swings arms and legs that get more and more countless with each motion.

“He knows, you know,” Billy says with a light little smile. “It’s no secret.”

“What?”

“He knows you want him. He sure as hell wants you.”

“It’s just-”

“Just nothing. Go on with you.”

Billy beams at you. He’s always doing that, beaming at you. You used to wonder if it was some sort of fatherly thing until it became a precursor to wedgies, Dings and other random injuries. You look at Elijah again. He isn’t looking at you. He’s looking across the floor at a girl with very little top on. The motion of his hips changes as he stares. Billy twists his eyebrows and beams into his beer. You wrap your hands around your glass.

“There’s ten thousand good reasons why not,” you tell the rapidly fading bubbles in the rapidly staling beer.

“And there’s why good reason why,” it answers in Billy’s voice. “So it’s your call, eh?”

You drink the whole beer but it doesn’t shut up. It says, “He’s looking at you again.”

 


	3. Track Three

/Your skin, oh yeah your skin and bones  
Turn into something beautiful/  
-Coldplay, “Yellow”

“Dom? Dom, can I?- Dom!”

There’s a lot of banging on your trailer door, hollow tin rumbles that echo in arcs along the walls. You roll onto your side, peeling a sweat-sticky forearm away from your eyes. The door opens because it doesn’t lock. It lets in a lot of light and Elijah.

“Are you okay?”

“Mm. Tired. I fell asleep.”

“On the floor?” he chuckles, plopping down beside you. He’s just come out of makeup and looks fresh-scrubbed and invigorated. He’s barefoot and you like the way the ragged fringes of his jeans lay against the pale tops of his feet.

“The gravity’s better down here. Give me this.” You curl your hands around his toes, squeeze his small smooth feet. He squeaks.

“What are you doing?”

“Just touching your feet. Does it bother you?”

“No,” he says, grinning down at you, his head cocked to the side. “People touch my feet all day. You never do it, that’s all.”

“Well I’m doing it now, so never say never. Just relax.”

He lies down, pushing his feet toward you. You like how everything he wears is pseudo-faded and trendy, lived in long past his years with the synthetic wear of machine-bodies. He presses one of his heels into your sternum and pushes you over on your back. You roll heavily, your nerves still asleep. He rests his ankles in the notches between your ribs and you feel close and cozy. You press your forearms to his shins.

“So what are we doing tonight?” he asks the ceiling. “Clubbing?”

“Is that an activity that requires mobility?”

“X-Box? I’ll move your thumbs for you.”

“Your place or mine?”

“Yours for sure. I can’t have you fuckers eating me out of house and home.” He digs into your chest with his toes. You convulse and squeeze hard until he squawks. His body comes out of nowhere, wrenching and thunking you awkwardly. He squirms on top of you and kneels on your palms, hands slamming down beside your ears. The floor rumbles. The position holds your shoulders open and he leans his face up close to yours. He’s too light and easy to really pin you, but the weight of your body and your willingness are both on his side.

“Then it’s settled,” you huff. His face is very close. Kissing-close.

“Then it is,” he replies challengingly. There’s a rebellious little note in his eyes and voice. Smugly on top.

“Then it is.”

You knee Elijah in the crotch gently. When he yelps you flip him kung-fu style halfway across the trailer.


	4. Track Four

/I am a visitor here  
I am not permanent/  
-The Postal Service, “D.C Sleeps Alone Tonight”

All the sweetness of the first kiss is lightly tempered with the let-down of the knowing. You’re young and you love anticipation, where the dream of the first kiss can take on endless variations until it is mythic and never-happened. You love all that wondering about what Elijah will taste like, when he’ll open his mouth, whether he’ll invite you inside or will it be the slick heat of his tongue coaxing yours into action... And now it’s here. Now Elijah’s lips are on yours and his tongue is poking wet and thick between your lips. Here, and real, and had.

He presses into you relentlessly. You try to size up your thoughts and figure out the nerves in your belly. This is the reward for a month of pursuit, your rest after the hard work of making up impetuous excuses to go out to places where you’ll be forced to touch him. But this is not a crowded club, a dangerous drunken street crossings or an unpleasantly small car. This is all the space and willingness of your couch. You’re triumphant. You’re surprised. You didn’t suppose it would be a simple matter of the two of you alone, leaning closer and closer. The simple matter of closing the last little gap and just fucking kissing him on the lips.

“Shit, Dom,” Elijah hisses. His cheeks are flushed and pink, and he looks soft and fuckable. His hands play with the waistband of your jeans, cutting off your breath as they twist and grind. You wanted this and now you’re getting it. You’re half-hard and getting harder with each of Elijah’s errant tugs and squeezes. “I didn’t… I mean I hoped you were serious, but… Shit.”

He grabs you by the back of the head and hauls you in for another kiss. He tastes like the cloves he was nervously smoking, and now he’s starting to get the delicious acrid taste-smell of aroused boy. And he’s all warm and wriggling and pressing up against you, just fucking begging for it like you knew he would. All yours for the taking. You growl into his mouth and crush him closer, pressing him into your chest. His fingers are inside your pants, creeping along your belly toward your cock. Warm and warmer and getting warmer.

“Dom,” he mutters happily, wrenching himself closer. You want to just kiss some more, take it slow, but passion is getting the better of you. His fingertips scrape artlessly along the rim of your cock and it jerks, headbutting itself against the rough inseam of your jeans. You groan harshly and he purrs, wrapping his palm around you. You tumble deeply into the couch cushions, spreading your legs for him, clawing beneath his T-shirt. You think you have a reputation for being easy on the first date.


	5. Track Five

/Easily you come to me  
Summoning the spirit we  
Only have a minute to never grow old/  
-Rachel Sage, “The Spirit We”

“Tell me where we’re going,” Elijah play-whines, tugging at the back of your shirt. You dart between the sidewalk traffic and feel his fingers trail off your ass.

“You’ll have to wait til we get there,” you reply.

This is very like you. You’re hopeless with dates—anniversaries, Valentine’s, and even Christmas you can’t remember if it’s the 25th or 28th—but you’ve always managed to cover your tracks. Now you charge recklessly through people, slamming shoulders and hips, longing for the space suggested in the huge open twilight of the Wellington sky above. Elijah scuffs along to follow you. You cast feelers into the record shops, the cafes, the bookstores, any place that might be a harbor for a date for Elijah’s birthday. The record shop’s too easy. The café is too lame. You could make the bookstore interesting but he might not bite. You flash him a smile. You can’t let him know you forgot.

OK. Ahead to the right is a toyshop, one of those classy and expensive old-school ones, toys made out of wood and string. You stop shortly in front of it, earning the rage of four frustrated rush hour commuters.

“We’re here,” you announce as the flow brings Elijah to your side.

“The toy store?”

“Surprise. It’s got to be nicer than being out here. C’mon.”

Inside he moans at the smells: lacquer, pine, tissue paper. The elderly proprietor frowns at you and you wave. Elijah pushes his fingertips into a tin box of cast iron toy soldiers and they rattle heavily. He picks up a handful and sifts them down again.

“Did you have these as a kid?” you ask.

“No way. I had modern shit, you know. Plastic, sound effects.”

“Toys that could never survive impact,” you agree, taking his thumb to lead him into the stacks. He reaches out to gently stroke a kite colored to resemble a sunny summer sky. “We could buy that,” you say quickly. “Since it’s summer for your birthday.”

“Summer in January,” he sighs happily, gazing at you. A gaze so open you’re unnerved for a minute. You grab a box for a plywood glider and shake it a little.

“This could be fun.”

“I used to have Voltron,” he says.

“What?”

“Voltron. Do you remember that? It was sort of like Power Rangers, toys that fastened together.”

“I didn’t have that. I had sport toys. Footballs and croquet.”

“You had croquet?”

“After I moved to England. I think my parents bought it as a joke. Did you ever get those chocolate eggs with the wee plastic toy inside?”

“We had Cracker Jack. Our lives were so different,” he says as if amazed.

“Indeed,” you agree with a sage nod, and shake the glider again. “I bet we could attach rockets to this and take out a major city. Pick something, Elijah.”

“I want…” He bites his bottom lip and trails his fingers over the rows of flying toys. He spins around and his fingertips brush across your chest. “…you.”

“Yeah but you can’t throw me off of high things and make voice-overs.”

“Wanna bet?” he giggles.

You put the glider back and go into the next row. It’s full of dolls and stuffed animals. There’s something reassuring about their stuffedness, their empty smiles and their shiny eyes. Like how it might feel good to tumble into a big pile of them. You pick up a floppy dun-colored dog.

“I always wanted one of those,” Elijah says.

“Really?”

“Yeah. Those were, like, those stuffed dogs everyone had. I was always totally captivated by how their limbs moved. They looked so… comfortable.”

You hand the dog to him, smiling at the subtle way his face lights up under the skin. He rubs his cheek against it, then holds it out to consider its range of motion. It hangs down from his palms. You imagine him small and longing for one, never sure why he couldn’t ask, just knowing that this was somehow a toy for other people. He shakes one of its broad paws. Some little thing inside your chest twinges with it.

“Do you want that?” you ask. He looks up as if startled, starting to blush beneath his eyes.

“Uumm…”

 

“Say yes.”

“Yes.”

“OK,” you announce heroically, puffing out your chest and heading for the counter. “Sold to Mr. Wood to repair years of childhood trauma. Your inner child thanks you for playing.”

Elijah doesn’t hand the dog to the man behind the counter, who seems to know its price anyway. He eyes you both suspiciously, lingering on the way Elijah has the dog pressed to the chest of his too-trendy T-shirt. You’re both crashers to his toy-world, smelling of city and desire and grown-up things. The sort of people who ruin toys, or buy them as jokes. You wonder about him as he rings your purchase, sliding your credit card awkwardly through the reader. You glance back at Elijah. You want to explain to the man that Elijah really /wants/ this toy, wants it like he wanted it as a kid, wants to play with it and hold it, everything in perfect alignment with his own vision. You don’t think you can voice this. Something about the size of you both makes you sad.

Back into the crowd Elijah slips his hand into yours. His palm is warm and slightly sweaty from clutching the dog so tightly. He holds it in the crook of his arm so that its legs bounce between you.

“Thanks, Dom,” he whispers, laying a kiss to the shell of your ear. You bend your head to kiss the side of his mouth.

“Happy birthday, baby.”

“It’s the best,” he answers. And at a crosswalk six blocks later, “Even though you forgot.”


	6. Track 6

/I have watched your unlove written like tabloids  
I had to stumble on while buying my food/  
-Bitch and Animal, “Traffic”

“Surprise!”

You look up from your key. Elijah is in your kitchen, rumpled and grinning. He has a wooden spoon in one hand and a cigarette in the other.

“Smells fantastic,” you say. “What is it?”

“Supper. Nothing, really. Just wanted to cook for you.”

“Can I see?”

“No you can’t see. You can’t see til it’s ready.”

You fling your jacket onto the couch and join it, sprawling to your aching limits. You watch him weaving through your space, smoke swirling around the spikes of his short funny mohawk, stirring and tasting things. He’s glowing slightly with what you suppose is his sheer joy of doing stuff for you. You smile. You know when you look back at this it will be a Happy Time, and then you chide yourself for thinking that. You take a deep breath and center yourself and try to just /enjoy/ it, enjoy being with him.

Which you do. It’s easy and light with him, fun when it’s fun and serious when it’s serious. You like the same things. You have the same friends. His body is nice in the bed, feels nice to curl against in sleep, one of your arms taking him at the waist to tuck him against you. Nice to have him grinning at you now, a smear of something red in the corner of his mouth. The tip of his tongue curls in to wipe it away.

“So you get to taste it and I don’t?” you chide. “No fucking fair, mate.”

“It’s my bonus prize for making it.” His eyes glow at you. His cigarette is about to fall all apart, and the spoon drips on the floor with a self-satisfied plop, and he’s glowing at you. Everything slows down as his glowing interferes with the speed of light.

“What?” you ask.

“Nothing,” he glows in reply. “I just love you. Nothing.”

He turns quickly to the stove. You’ve taken a sharp inhalation and don’t realize you’re holding it until it stampedes out and sounds like a sigh. He looks at you over his shoulder, eyes scared, wet. You sit up. You’re shaking but because you’re tired, not because you’re scared. He stirs the pot intently.

“I just love you,” he tells it.

“Lij.”

He doesn’t turn. You don’t get up. He’s surrounded by smell and steam and whatever his private thoughts are, and you can’t imagine but then maybe you can. Those deer-headlight thoughts that rush across the wasteland of admitting your feelings once everything else in your head has suddenly, terrifyingly emptied out.

“It smells nice,” you say softly.

“I’m about to burn it. Dom, maybe we should just go get Chinese.”

You duck the spear of a French loaf as it sails through the air for your head.


	7. Track Seven

/No time to search the world around  
‘Cuz you know where I’ll be found  
When I come around/  
-Greenday, “When I Come Around”

“Don’t worry so much,” Billy says. He sends the balls spinning around the table and sinks three, all stripes.

“You really are magic with a pool cue, Bills.”

“Anyway it’s not serious.”

“I’m not in love with him. In what way is that unserious?”

The balls clatter uselessly against each other. “It happens all the time. People change.”

“Spoiled so soon. You think it’s me?”

“It’s not spoiled,” Billy says, giving you the stick. “You’re just in different places. I think that’s OK.”

You crouch level with the table. Over the little humps of balls you see Billy’s fingers rubbing the lacquered wood compulsively. You line up a shot and stab at it, watch the ball twirl helplessly into the pocket nearest Billy’s nervous hands. The clatter of balls and felt is soothing somehow, complementary to the way thoughts are ramming around in your brain. You straighten.

“Nice.”

“Too nice. I don’t want to break his heart, Bill. He’s so sweet, and it’s not like I don’t like him, just…”

“You don’t love him. It’s different. And it’s not enough.”

You wander around the table chewing on your lower lip. You go to stand on Billy’s side, shoulder to shoulder to survey the possibilities. You lean across him and he’s warm against your side and hip. He curls an arm between your thighs.

“Don’t goose me, man.”

“I won’t.”

“I mean it, like. You’re lining up for an A-plus goose there.”

“Am not! A fellah can’t just hold his mate’s inner thigh for no reason?” You hear the high riding laughter he struggles to keep out of his voice. If you looked now his eyes would be bright and his face would be simple. His hand gets tighter on your thigh.

“Trying to cop a feel then?”

You pin the cue ball in the space between word and thought, but you’re not fast enough. The moment the stick shoots between your fingers gravity reverses around your pants, there’s an arm around your chest and you’re in the air, swiping uselessly at Billy and threatening the lighting fixtures. Roaring rhythmically, he swings you away from the table and hurls you down on the nearest sofa.

“Unfair!” you bellow. “Interference! Do-overs!”

“Quit your whinging. Anyway you scratched, so it’s my turn. Give me that.”

He takes the cue and prances to the table. You scramble after him, tugging at your hair and clothes. He’s all concentration but you break it easily by landing on his back. He grunts as his chin connects with the table.

“Bugger, Dom!”

“What? I tripped. Did I hurt you?”

“Fucking well broke my jaw, I think.”

“Want me to kiss it better?”

“Kiss it worse you mean.”

You ride him as he shoots. You like the way the shifting of his shoulders tosses you around. Despite your arms winched about his neck he sinks another two balls with effortless aplomb. You smile and then you feel guilty for having fun. You wonder where Elijah is, what he’s doing. You wonder if he’s thinking about you, and if it makes him sad. You didn’t want to tell anyone, really; you didn’t want to drag your personal stuff all over the place. But Billy is different. Billy is the person you tell these things to.

“It’ll work itself out,” Billy interrupts, strolling around the table. You dig the heels of your sneakers into his belly. They’re green Pumas with yellow stripes and they perfectly match the green of his T-shirt. You wonder if it happened on purpose. “He’ll get hurt but he’ll get over it. The most important thing is to be honest.”

“Stupid honesty.”

“Why do you think you don’t love him?”

“I don’t know. He’s so quiet all the time. And he’s not fun like you’re fun.”

Billy twists his neck to violent angles in order to meet your eyes. You start to blush a little before you realize it.

“Reason enough. I’m going for the eight ball. Hold on.”


	8. Track Eight

Annie waits for the last time  
Just the same as the last time  
Annie says, “You see  
This is why I’d rather be alone”  
-Ben Folds, “Annie Waits”

You welsh out of participating in sex again. It’s almost too easy these days. You play it off to exhaustion, though technically Elijah is more tired than you. He bitches and moans through the entire evening routine, but the moment both your heads hit the pillow his arm is sliding across the mattress. You groan inside but you stay still; you pretend you’re asleep or very thoughtful. Elijah spreads his palm so he can get fingertips on both your nipples. He rolls them until they harden. You don’t want to have sex with him. The trouble is that your body can always be convinced.

“Dom…” Elijah purrs softly, mostly to himself. You think. It has the warm, satisfied sound of your name inside his head, the you he has, not the you you are.

You rumble a little despite yourself. Your back arches so slightly of its own accord, thrusting your chest into his hand. And then he’s next to you, breathing heavily across your collarbone. And then his hands are everywhere. Your hands remain pinned behind your head as if your skull has trapped them. And he’s on your mouth and your cock, and you make acquiescent noises but you don’t ever move.

You wonder if he notices that you never get off your back. He seems not to mind but he gives off clues. Little things like rubbing his face against your lips fishing for kisses, or trying to flip you on top of him subtly. You never go. Sometimes you distract him by pretending to get angry and biting, tearing into this throat until groans break from him and you leave ugly, unconcealable red welts. Sometimes this does the trick, or he pretends it does. He continues trying to get you both off at the same time. You tolerate it and struggle to keep your brain from drifting muzzily into dreams. You no longer make any show of participating, and you no longer really feel guilty.

Elijah climbs atop you, straddling your crotch. He begins humping, and you press back roughly. He moans, high and bleating. You bounce him up and down but it exhausts your calves and you don’t want to. He’s moaning and sighing and gasping. He leans forward because he wants to press his forehead against yours, but his forehead gets round and clammy and you hate how it feels. You present him with forearms to hold him back, supporting his chest with your crossed arms. He grabs your biceps and keeps whining.

“Fuck me,” he sighs. “Ooh, fuck me.”

The longing and innocence with which he says it nearly breaks your heart. You bite your bottom lip. Your brain wheels ahead with excuses why you can’t, but the reason is too clear. You encourage his dry-fucking, which is getting quite wet now, and you’re wide awake but you wish you weren’t. You wish you were soundly asleep. You wish you were someone else. One of his screaming fangirls, someone who worshipped him. No: just someone who loved him enough. His smell is claustrophobic in your nostrils, his touch too close to your skin. You want to shove him away but you don’t. You close your eyes.


	9. Track Nine

My fuse is burning out  
And all that powder’s gone to waste  
-Elvis Costello, “Indoor Fireworks”

Elijah likes to fight because he thinks it represents confidence in the other person’s presence. You like to mouth “break up with me” silently when his back is turned. But since his tactic is more fulfilling, usually you end up fighting.

Your daily lives are littered with landmines and anything can set them off. This time it’s five AM in Feet, and you’ve put on a CD he doesn’t like. He tells you in no uncertain terms that you’re a complete idiot to have put that CD in and you’ll take it out immediately if you know what’s good for you. You reply that it’s just a fucking CD, and he replies that at five AM /nothing/ is just a CD. He throws some insults in there for balance. You refuse to be insulted. Sean and Billy meet each other’s eyes in the mirror.

So you and Elijah, separated by two boxes and four Feet people, scream at each other at the top of your lungs for the next forty-five minutes. When the Feet people tell you you can sit down you both flop gratefully into your chairs, exhausted and silent. The CD, on mute, gives up little electronic buzzes as it whirs around the slot.

“I don’t know why I bother,” Elijah mutters loudly to his mirror.

“I don’t know why you bother either,” you retort to his reflection.

He looks at you from behind Billy’s hair. His eyes are pure terror, water with hurt. You feel that familiar tearing in your chest as your heart rips for him and all the sadness of his putting up with you. The area under his eyes is black. For a moment you want to take him in your arms and be sorry, kiss his forehead, promise to love him. But then you only sort of love him when you’re on the verge of hurting him, and that’s self-protection rather than love, really. That is Not Enough. He loves you and you don’t love him. So then why the fuck is it so hard to let him go?

You reach across and turn up the volume on the CD. Sean exhales sharply. You watch with relief as Elijah’s eyes steadily freeze over into hate.


	10. Track Ten

/I may  
Take a holiday in Spain  
Leave my wings behind me  
Drive this little girl insane  
Fly away to someone new/  
-Counting Crows, “Holiday in Spain”

Billy whoops, swings his board onto his shoulder and charges. You and Elijah hang back and watch him scramble into the sunrise, meeting the waves chest-first. The sand is cold on your bare feet but you’re snug inside your wetsuit. Elijah grins at you and his face is formed from the tight lines of morning.

“This was a good idea,” he says. “It’s a really good idea to take some time off. I’m so sick of acting.”

“You are?”

“Yeah. Just having to switch so rapidly from myself into someone else, you know? Back and forth, and whose life is it, and what am I carrying around in my head… It gets really exhausting.” He scratches the back of his head. “I’m glad we’re here.”

“Me too.”

He flips his sandals into the tall grasses with an efficient flick of his feet. “You coming?”

“In a minute.”

“OK. See you out there.”

He gallops into the ocean. He tries to vault the whiteheads but trips and goes pitching. Billy’s head bobs with laughter from where he’s splayed on his belly on his board, further out. Elijah slings himself over his board and swims for it, the strong confidence of his strokes easily carrying him past the rough patches. You watch the pale flash of his hands against his black wetsuit and the sparkling darkness of the sea. Elijah reaches Billy and paddles into an about-face, scrabbling about until he mounts his board. He and Billy offer you matching waves. You wave them back to go ahead, flinging your heel into your hand in a pretend stretch. Their arms fall to their sides.

You crouch comfortably into your solitude and the sand. You watch them floating there with their heads turned over their shoulders. Elijah picks a wave, suddenly falling flat as the sea swells to meet him. He starts swimming and for a moment it looks like nothing will happen, but then the back of his board tilts subtly into the air. You watch him waver carefully to his feet, and the whole tenuous situation is flipped on its head. He meets the board and the ocean in complete control, cutting back and forth across the wave’s face, body hunched down in concentration. He’s brilliant to watch, though his surfing itself does not entirely rival brilliance. He’s brilliant because he enjoys it, because his focus goes to it, because he /does/ it. Sometimes he’s the same when he acts. Sometimes when you’re in scenes with him he meets your eyes with a face that is pure Frodo, unable to separate himself from the job. Moments like that and like this you could almost love him, moments when he is other than he is with you.

The wave ends easily and he slides into the wet sand, his board shucking and slowing until he trips off it. He takes a few rambunctious, staggering steps before the leash catches his ankle and he trips, landing in a soggy heap. Out on the ocean Billy claps.

“Nice dismount,” you say.

“Thanks,” he answers, getting up. He stands close to you, the water chill rising off the warmth of his wetsuit. “Kiss me?”

You bite your bottom lip. He stares at your mouth and then at your eyes.

“You don’t want to?” he asks.

“I don’t /not/ want to. It’s just.”

“I know,” he sighs. His eyes shift nervously out to sea. “Is it… Is it sex in general or just sex with me?”

“Lij.”

“Because if it’s me then it’s…”

“Then it’s what?”

He looks at the ocean again. You watch Billy balancing on the very top of a wave, his hair lit by what is now complete daylight in a bright blue sky. Elijah’s smell is strongly saltwater, a little bit sickening and a little bit arousing. You look at him from the corner of your eye, at his sticky hair against his face and the salt crusting on his skin. He looks back to you. He could be crying or he could just be wet.

“Let’s not,” you interrupt him. “Please? We’re here on holiday. I don’t know why everything has to be so serious all the time.”

“It’s OK if you’re not in love with me,” Elijah says. “I don’t mind. I love you, so…” He shrugs, his wetsuit shortening the motion. You wonder how he knew and then you feel daft for wondering. You hear the harsh grate of Billy sliding into shore.

“It’s not OK with me,” you say. “It’s not enough.”

“You’re the one who says it’s not enough.”

“Yeah. I am.”

You tug your board out of the sand and step away. Rage boils inside your belly, and you’re aware of its shaking energy and the sensitive heat it plays across your skin. You walk over to Billy who sparkles when he’s wet.

“Nice one.”

“You weren’t even watching,” he smiles. He looks over his shoulder. “Did you do something to Elijah?”

“Nothing any different than usual. Maybe you should talk to him, Bills. I just don’t want to do this now.”

“You can’t keep stringing the kid along. Make a clean break.”

“How? We work together, we see each other every day… It’s easier to stay together than pick apart the aftermath.”

“Stay together til we wrap, then. It’s only a few more months.”

“That’s so pathetic.”

“Ask him, I don’t know. Didn’t you just say you didn’t want to do this?”

“Yeah.”

“So how come we’re doing it?” He grins. “Get yourself out there, mate. We’re gonna ride some fucking waves and drink some fucking beer and chill some fucking out.”

He shoves you in the chest. The wetsuit buffers the sensation but you get the impact, staggering a little. You shove him back. He shoves you with both hands and you fall, the sand rough on your bare heels. You grab him around the knees and he lets you take him down so he can jam his elbows into your ribs. Your breath leaves you in a strangled laugh. Your face hits the sand and you see Elijah where you left him, staring out to sea with his periphery fixed on you.

“Er, let’s tone it down,” you hear yourself muttering, pushing Billy back. “Can’t have too much fun when Elijah’s in a piss.”

You both stumble to your feet, making enough finishing noise that Elijah finally looks and then comes over. Billy makes a joke and slaps you in the back of the head for good measure. Elijah’s eyes test you both out and eventually he breaks into a smile of his own, then a laugh. Trust Billy to defuse the bomb. He keeps going, slicing through wires of tension, rerouting green envies and red suspicions until you’re there as a trio, on holiday, and you take your boards all together and you head out to have fun.

You cannot express to Billy what a relief it is to just have some fucking /fun/ in Elijah’s presence. For it just to be easy again, touches and looks devoid of deep meaning. You all ride hard and take your poundings. Your body feels like your own, outside of Elijah’s jurisdiction, your own personal frame again. You stand and lie flat, alone and together, and you go in and out of the rented house for drinks and pisses and you flop in heaps or singles in the sand, warming, drying. You catch a few of the sort of waves that remind you why you love surfing, the sort that are broad and caring, floating you up and cradling you for what feels like miles. You take a few tumbles that hurl you to the sea floor, grating and panic and the stomach-turning jerk of the leash that flips you over and drags you helpless and spluttering after your unmanned board. You ride until your muscles ache and the blaring sun is too loud, and you all agree to take what turns into a permanent break.

You peel your wetsuits off on the deck, keeping your eyes averted and your bodies bent. Elijah beats you both to the first shower. You and Billy pad to your individual bedrooms for shorts, and you have to rout through Elijah’s stuff that’s packed in your bag until you can come up with a pair, mottled green and white, hopelessly lame. In the kitchen Billy is wearing a yellow T-shirt that rides up and down over the rim of his green shorts.

“Modesty?” you ask, shoving past him into the fridge.

“Sunburn.”

“You were in a wetsuit.”

“Avoiding it. I get crispy on a moment’s notice. Look- I burned the backs of my fucking hands.”

He offers his hands for your inspection. Sure enough they are red and thin-skinned. You touch them. He winces.

“Wanker.”

“They’re hot.”

“Sunburn, I told you. And the back of my neck too.”

“You need some aloe. Right? That plant you crack open?”

“They’ve planted one on the window.” He gestures to a spiky plant in a sandy pot poking out from behind the faucet. You go over to it and break off one of its points. Colorless ooze spreads across your fingers. “These rental people are lovely; they think of everything. Give me that.”

You give him the tip. He squeezes it studiously and spreads it across his hands, massages it into the back of his neck. His bones crack when he tilts his head. When he lifts his arms his T-shirt raises and his belly is lightly hairy in the thin strip above his shorts.

“Beer?” you ask.

“My hands are full.”

“That’s OK.”

You pick up the plump bottle of Heineken and tilt it to his lips. He smiles at you coyly and opens his mouth to accept it. You monitor the careful attention of his throat as he swallows. When you take the bottle away there’s a sheen of condensation of his lips. You reach for it with a finger, consciously but also not, just invading Billy’s space like you do with him. His lips are freezing on your fingertip. His eyes spark when your finger slips errantly inside his mouth, just touching the hot hard tips of his bottom teeth and the smooth glide of the inside of his mouth. His arms drop to his side.

“Better,” you tell him. You’re still poking him in the mouth. “But now you’re all greasy.”

The shower turns off. You both step back simultaneously, as if caught. When you mirror the fear in each other’s eyes you break into laughter, and you’re laughing when Elijah arrives in the kitchen in a towel.

“Billy you’re all shiny,” he says, kicking you in the calves as he opens the fridge. You wonder if he suspects something, but there is nothing to suspect. You watch him bend forward, his towel slipping low on his ass. You want to slap him because it would be funny, flirtatious, but it’s the idea you’re interested in and not his body specifically. Your stomach curdles and you shove the thoughts aside. “So what are we doing now?”

“Always have to entertain the kids,” Billy cracks, but it takes a minute for his voice to get going and you wonder if you’ve upset him. He’s rubbing the aloe around and around the back of his hands until it looks dry and uncomfortable. “Can I have the shower?”

“Sure,” you say, and he darts by you out the door. His body strikes yours and you stumble. Elijah catches you.

“What happened to him?” he asks.

“Diarrhea. Hungry?”

“Naw. Sea sick. Do I smell like seaweed?”

“Huh?”

“You smell like seaweed.” Elijah’s nose jams into your chest. You touch his hair, clumpy despite washing. His palms hit your bare sides and pave the way for the long slide of his forearms against your skin. His mouth approaches yours.

“Lij, I-” You step back. He does too, even though you’ve stepped away from him.

“Dom… You’re giving up a good thing.”

“Statements like that are absurd. If Hitler said that to you you’d still give him his ring back.”

“Is that how you see me?”

“Elijah.” You squeeze your eyelids. There’s something remarkable about break-up poetics, the simple art of lines untempered and heart-felt.

“So we’re breaking up then?”

“Um… fuck, I don’t know. Yes.” You reach for your beer. It seems to have gone missing. Maybe Billy took it. “Like a radio station. You’re driving out of range.”

“You’re the one driving, Dom.”

Break-up poetry; break-up face. The eyes like water, the mouth and hands mobile. The sudden pathetic gravity of his body drawing all emotion toward it where he’s come to rest in the kitchen, a towel low on his hips, a beer weeping in his hand.

“OK,” you exhale. You start to rub your palms compulsively up and down your thighs until the heat starts burning through your shorts. “OK. Listen-”

“No,” Elijah replies. He walks out of the kitchen.

You stand there for a couple minutes inhaling deeply, smelling aloe and beer and soap and outside. You hear the sand-shuck of Elijah putting on sandals and clunking across the deck. His lighter hisses and then you smell smoke.

The shower goes off so abruptly you wonder if Billy’s been listening. When he arrives in the kitchen you know he has because of the concern dripping off his face.

“Elijah’s naked out there,” he says.

“How do you know?”

“There’s a window in the shower. His towel fell off. You OK?”

“Yeah. Of course.”

“Is /he/ OK?”

“I don’t know. Probably not.”

“Do you care?”

“Of course I care, Billy. Shit.” You grab the back of your hair and pull. You feel pent-up and aggressive, want to /do/ something to someone but what and who. You go into the fridge for another beer. When you close the door Billy is still there, making puddles on the tile. “Get back in your shower.”

“I was done anyway.”

He turns around and for some reason you reach out and rip his towel off. He’s knotted it loosely in the small of his back and it only takes the lightest stroke of your fingers to make the whole thing float gently around his ankles. His shoulders set in shock as you’re presented with the familiar sight of his ass and the backs of his thighs. But then your hand shoots out again and ghosts along the careful indentation at the base of his spine. His skin is hot, damp.

“Dom?” he says without turning around.

“Don’t mind me, I’m just being passive-aggressive.”

He turns around. Slowly, you daresay. And makes no reach for his towel. So that you’re faced with him face-to-face, and you see that his cock is hard and upright against his belly. You start to laugh and point but when you see the little frown on his face you don’t.

“Uhm, this isn’t a come-on, is it?” you attempt to chuckle.

And then the door slams against the wall. You smell smoke strongly before Elijah has his hands all over you, battering your shoulders and head.

“What the fuck are you doing?” he yells. “/What the fuck do you think you’re doing?/”

You raise your arms but he’s already moved on to Billy, who had the brains to head for the other room when Elijah entered. Elijah captures him halfway to the couch and tackles him, sending them both to the floor. Elijah is startled and just sits on Billy’s back, hands clasped loosely around Billy’s neck.

“Elijah cut it out!” you yell, not sure why you sound so shrill and panicked. You grab him by something—the hair, the nape, whatever—and peel him off Billy so hard he almost does a backflip and lands in a painful pile of his own. Billy scrambles to his feet and protects himself with the other side of the couch.

“I fucking knew it!” Elijah is screaming. “I fucking knew you two were hot for each other! How long, Dom, huh? You’ve been doing this since before we started dating, or- or what?”

“Nothing happened,” Billy says, but his eyes are stormy and his face is flushed and something very well /could/ have happened by the looks of him. His cock is deflating, but not quickly enough. “Really, nothing happened.”

“But you wish it did, don’t you?”

Silence. You realize he’s asking you. You look at him and he’s dark and serious. And you realize that, really, you have nothing else to say.


	11. Track Eleven

/Don’t blink, everyone’s watching  
They’ll think you’re up to something/  
-Dashboard Confessional, “Morning Calls”

When he touches you you think you’ll puke. The intimate slide of his palm against the back of your jacket, and how his body notches into yours, and the spikes of his hair jamming you gel-hard in the forehead. You press your cheek against his and you both wear matching grins.

“Great to see you.”

“Aye, been ages.”

The flashbulb pops.

The camera vanishes.

You both leap apart like twin magnets.

He disappears and you wade back across the carpet to Billy. Los Angeles is steadily filling with warm, thick-aired dusk, and you think this is a night to be at a beach and not a premiere. A night for clear air and waves, not the wool press of dress-bodies and the lights and the roar. You wave randomly. You dodge pockets of people in your search.

You find Billy all tangled up with Orlando. Orlando looks like a clown in his bright pink suit, and Billy looks like a turd in his fucking kilt. You’re laughing when you reach him.

“You know a pair of fish-nets would really-”

“So shut up, then,” Billy retorts violently, but he’s smiling. Seems like he always smiles when he looks at you. To be honest you can’t quite work up to it, and he feels like a stranger when you’re with him like this. But you accept his hand on your shoulder and the eventual soft brush of his lips across one of your eyebrows.

“I’ll go,” Orlando giggles, but truth is he’s being dragged away anyway. You curl up into Billy, press your face into the shoulder pad of his jacket and close your eyes.

“Can we go now?” you whimper.

“Not having a good time?”

“It’s just too fucking awkward. I can’t stand the way he’s looking at me.”

“He’s not looking at you now,” Billy observes.

“Yeah but he’s doing it on purpose.”

You look up into his eyes and you feel lame for looking miserable, and you know Billy knows you’re a big boy and can deal. You wonder if relationships will always leave you feeling like an irresponsible shite. In the eventual aftermath, when you and Billy were trekking through the sand while Elijah fiercely sorted his things from yours, you told Billy that you were cursed. You said that sooner or later you drop everyone who has ever handed themselves to you, that your fingers open forgetfully and everything shatters. Billy touched your shoulder and it hurt. You realized you were sunburned.

Billy said, “You haven’t dropped me yet. I’ll think we’ll be all right.”

“We” was not the Billy and Dom who were mates. “We” was some new, scary pairing that you knew you would never be ready for. But you let him draw you in, and now you can’t remember the way out. And maybe this is not so bad, but why does it leave you feeling scarred?

Across the carpet Elijah touches the stretched-out fingertips of his fans, a hesitant smile playing tag with his lips. Billy’s palm burns into yours as you clasp hands. You carefully hide your joined fists in your pocket.


End file.
